


and keep your feet on the ground

by pocketmumbles (livelikejack)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual Character, Everyone Is Alive, F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-29
Updated: 2014-10-29
Packaged: 2018-02-22 22:53:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2524682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livelikejack/pseuds/pocketmumbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Prompt: ace Allison who’s always acted more sexual to make up for not feeling anything and her partner realizing it</em> </p>
<p>She tells herself that it’s an exercise in romance, a further practice in navigating relationships and coming out strong before anything else, but she knows that isn’t true. She’s falling for him too soon, too fast, hurtling through free fall with the bottom nowhere in sight.</p>
<p>It’s terrifying.</p>
<p>It’s exhilarating.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and keep your feet on the ground

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows" by Brand New because I am very uncreative. It's not really as dour as the song is, but that same idea of relationships falling apart from not saying things out loud. Happy ending, though. Or, at least, a hopeful one.
> 
> Wow, I went pretty off-road with this prompt. For some reason, I decided to go super introspective with zero dialogue, so the entire last half of the prompt is just implication.
> 
> Deviates from canon in the sense that no one died or moved to Europe.

Growing up as an Argent taught Allison how to anticipate what someone would expect of her and decide which battles weren’t worth fighting, all before she finished shaking their hand. It’s a hard-won skill, earned through boxes of half-finished poetry and paint flaking on old paper packed away long before the corners of her mother’s mouth turned down towards them. If she can anticipate her family’s expectations, she can anticipate the average adult’s expectations, and she can certainly anticipate those of her teenage peers.

She’s thrown for a loop when Scott McCall simply turns around and gives her a pen before she even admits that she needs one. She settles for flashing him a bright smile and thanking him, but she’s off-kilter already, unsure of how to behave around him.

Allison should stay away from him, steer clear of someone she can’t get a read on, someone who makes her feel so _vulnerable_ , but she finds herself being drawn in, instead. She should say no when Scott invites her to the party, but she remembers the soft brush of his thumb across her cheek and says yes. She shouldn’t give him a second chance after he disappears from the party, but she remembers the way her world closed down to just the two of them as they danced and gives herself away.

She tells herself that it’s an exercise in romance, a further practice in navigating relationships and coming out strong before anything else, but she knows that isn’t true. She’s falling for him too soon, too fast, hurtling through free fall with the bottom nowhere in sight.

It’s terrifying.

It’s exhilarating.

Allison doesn’t know why she shows him her old, terrible poetry and paintings, or why she takes him down to the garage to show him her bow when he asks her what she’s good at. She doesn’t know why she keeps laying down card after card on the table, when she’s supposed to be getting him to do that instead. Maybe it’s the way he doesn’t even try to tease anything out of her, maybe it’s the way he doesn’t hold any of his cards to his chest.

Maybe she’s starting to like the feeling of free fall.

Still, he’s a teenage boy, and there’s one thing she can count on anticipating with them. He responds happily, enthusiastically, when she kisses him, and she pushes down the twinge of disappointment in her chest. He’s thrown her enough curveballs as it is; she shouldn’t expect this one, too. Besides, this is what she wants: anticipating expectations, analyzing situations, choosing when to counter them and when to let them unfold.

She needs to be in control of at least _something_ when it comes to Scott McCall. She needs at least one safety line, at least one route of action that she can see down to the end before it even happens. So she presses him down deep into her bed, and she steals a condom out of Kate’s luggage. She knows where this is going to go, and that’s what matters. What she wants, what she feels isn’t important. First and foremost, she must be strong.

It’s the better choice in the long run. Rather than charging in blind, she merely has to recalibrate when she figures him out a little more. She has to initiate, or else he won’t. However she leads him, he will follow. He needs reassurance, needs to constantly ask her if this is okay, if she wants this from him. It’s a simple enough routine to accommodate for, especially when Scott himself is so accommodating. It’s stable; it’s manageable. It’s everything she should – it’s everything she _wants_ from a relationship.

It’s the better choice in the long run, especially after everything that happens. Allison keeps telling herself that when Scott helps her ditch school on her birthday, when he leaves her with their friends in a dark classroom to face a terrible monster on his own, when he sneaks into the winter formal just to dance with her and when he turns out to be a werewolf, the very creature she’s supposed to hunt and destroy. She keeps telling herself this every time he blows right past all her carefully laid plans, every time he flips her world upside down with nothing more than a casual sentence and pure-hearted smile. It’s the better choice to know what to anticipate in her bed, if she can’t anticipate anything else.

He already has her heart. She has to keep something for herself. She has to be strong.

She has to be strong, and instead of leading, she messes everything up. She should’ve known better, she wasn’t ready, she should have listened to her family, she never should have obeyed them at all. She knows Scott will understand when she breaks up with him, and he does. But he throws her off-course again, just the tiniest of deviations, when he tells her that he knows they’ll be together. It’s so very him to have that sweet, naïve outlook in spite of everything that’s happened, and she curses herself for not anticipating it. She should know him better than he knows her.

She should know him because he loves her.

It’s harder than she expects to let him go, to let him grow apart from her while she does some desperately needed growing of her own. It’s hard to distance herself from everyone she’s wronged – everyone, she’s wronged everyone – and she doesn’t understand why Lydia stays with her. Allison clings to her more than she’d like to admit. Lydia anchors her so steadily, so effortlessly, tethering her back down to reality when she follows too far in her family’s footsteps.

She is strong. And she’s going to prom.

To her surprise, she finds Isaac Lahey stepping his way into her life, over the scars of daggers through backs and claws raking down the walls of a supply closet. He doesn’t throw her off track the way Scott did, he isn’t unassuming, and he’s far from generous. He calculates her moves just as much as she calculates his, and they’re – they’re everything she’d wanted, once upon a time. They’re stable. They’re manageable. They look to each other’s expectations and head them off before anything needs to be said.

They nearly destroy their love before it even has a chance to begin. It’s not until he throws her out of the path of lethal water and ends up in a coma, and it’s not until she stops the Oni from slicing him open and finds herself on the wrong end of a sword, that they learn to stop calculating each other’s moves. It’s a struggle to just let things happen, to just let the cards fall from their hands and tumble onto the table, and she hates it. Isaac hates it just as much as she does, and she takes comfort in that. He throws her off-course, she throws him off-course, and they throw each other off-course when they stop themselves mid-recalibration. They’re not flying through free-fall so much as they’re tumbling down a steep cliff with plenty of bumps and bruises along the way. They’re imperfect, so they’re perfect for each other.

Still, he’s a teenage boy, and there’s one thing she can count on anticipating with them. He responds eagerly enough when she kisses him, is quick to match her movements with his own. He needs reassurance, too, but not in the way she expects. He doesn’t ask for anything, doesn’t try anything at all unless she starts it or guides his hands. She finds herself asking him if this is okay, if he wants this from her, and it’s terrifying to be on the other end of the questions. He nods and goes along with it so easily, so _complacently_ , and it sets her on edge, sends her tipping off-balance again in the one place she’d always felt secure.

She’d been in control with Scott, she’d called the shots, and he’d only ever tried to please her. If she didn’t actually want it, that was her own fault, and she was okay with that. Better to be unhappy and in control than uncertain and lost. But with Isaac…she’s uncertain, she’s lost, and Isaac’s trusting her to lead the way she always does, to take charge and keep him safe, and she finds herself falling into a panic.

She’s let go of her control in so many ways. But here, here where she’s always expected to have it, here where she’s counting on it, here where someone else is counting on _her_ , she’s completely lost.

It hurts to let him go. She knows Isaac won’t understand when she breaks up with him, and he doesn’t. She doesn’t let herself think of what to expect from him, but his quiet devastation makes her ache. It hurts to walk away from him, it hurts to distance herself from everyone she’s wronged – him, just him, cutting deeper than any dagger in the back – and she still doesn’t understand why Lydia stays with her. Allison clings to her again, admits it freely. Lydia still anchors her so steadily, rooting her back down to her core when she gets lost in her own mind.

She is strong. And she went to prom. And now she needs to find her own balance, the way she never let herself even want to before.

Allison slowly relearns her way around her own bed. She learns what she wants – not much – and she learns what she likes. She learns to trust herself to lead, learns to follow her own desires. She’d spent so long trying to live up to some hypothetical desire that she never bothered to figure out any of her own. She should have figured it out sooner, for her sake as much as anyone else’s. She hurt Isaac, and she hurt Scott, and she hurt herself.

She hopes that they can learn to forgive her, one day.

They throw her for a loop by showing up at her door, together, hand in hand. Isaac holds out his free hand to her with questioning uncertainty, and Scott holds out his with steady reassurance. They all stare at each other carefully, hesitantly, a million thoughts racing through their minds into blissful silence.

She takes their hands and lets them in.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say [hi](http://pocketlass.tumblr.com)!


End file.
